“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” – John Wanamaker, father of modern advertising.

‘If it moves measure it’ - Meg Whitman, CEO eBay

The biggest attraction for most senior executives towards using the Internet in marketing is the ability to measure the impact of almost every action you undertake. This is in stark contrast with traditional TV or magazine or even billboard advertising where although executives new that in the end it worked, it was impossible to tell what worked.

Insight

The Internet has truly transformed John Wanamaker’s axiom. Marketing people are now forced to understand the art of measurement like never before.

How to apply

What to measure? Here are a few simple variables that you can start looking at. As you become more familiar with the measurement tools you are able to understand an increasing number of links and trends and observe their impact.

1. Traffic to your website: Whatever campaign you undertake, one clear indication of success will be the number of people who came to your site as a result of the campaign.
   
2. You should track this carefully, looking for Unique Visitors (the number of people who came to your site once or several times over a period of time). Try to correlate as much as possible the number of visits to the actual actions you were doing at the time. If traffic increases on Thursday was it because of a banner, a magazine add, or simply an item in the news?
   
3. Second look at where people go on your website, which pages do they visit most often and how long to they stay there. You can use a range of software to do this, but why not start with the best one that also happens to be free: Google Analytics ( http://www.google.com/analytics/)
   
4. Referring links: another good indicator of how well your site is doing in a given community is the number of sites that connect to you site. You can do this in Google simply by typing “link:” before your URL in the Google search engine (e.g. “link:www.zn.be”).
   
5. Blogging: you can check how many times people are talking about your products, services, and issues in the blogging community. To start with, use a service like Technorati.com that allows you to search in the content of blogs. You will be able to assess the frequency and quality of what is said about the keywords that you are interested in. More advanced tools also exist to in depth monitor the buzz around a specific topic or campaign.
   
6. Newsletter registration: If you don’t have a registration module on your site; get one. You will be able to measure how many people choose to sign up to your site. This is a strong indicator of the interest people have in your company and product. Apart from name and email address, be careful with the additional information you ask for. Always explain why you need it. It should have a direct relevance for your campaign objective.
   
7. Sales: This is a simple but obvious indicator of the success of a marketing campaign: how many sales did you generate online or offline? If you sell online – measure who buys, when they buy and how they get to your site.
   
8. If you are running an online ad campaign: Measure how many people clicked your ad, how many people find you via Google. Try out different banners and measure which worked and which ones didn’t.

With each new communication effort you should look for ways to measure your impact. Decide upfront which variables to track, so your team can prepare the setup accordingly. Think about your campaign in terms of measurable objectives and create a performance dashboard to monitor it. This will keep you focused. It also allows you to take corrective action based on what works and what doesn’t – a quantum leap forward compared to John Wanamaker’s time.

Sources & References

EIAA Online Branding Effectiveness Study 2004
http://www.eiaa.net/research/adeffectiveness.asp
This study conclusively demonstrates that online marketing works as a means of building brands and increasing purchase intent. It also reveals online advertising has a significant impact on FMCG brands, a sector not traditionally seen as a widespread adopter of online marketing.

“The Ultimate Marketing Machine” - The Economist 6 July 2006
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7138905

ZN eMarketing Agency can help you with Web traffic monitoring tools and with Website Audit
http://www.zn.be


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